Bill Sardithe vitamin supplement answer man

How many times will modern medicine attempt to scare the public away from vitamin C pills? The naysayers never stop trying, even if they have to exaggerate their “science” to prove their point.

So the most recent example is a short report in the most recent issue of JAMA Internal Medicine (formerly Archives Internal Medicine) that said (once again), high-dose vitamin C pills (as ascorbic acid) more than double the risk for kidney stones.

Well, let’s not get to carried away by their science. Based upon data obtained from a single questionnaire back in 1997, the absolute increased risk was 0.310% a year for vitamin C pill users and 0.163% a year for non-users, for roughly a 2-fold difference in risk.

In other words, if you take high-dose ascorbic acid pills your increased risk for kidney stones in a year rises from 1/6th of one-percent to 1/3rd of one-percent. Got it?

Steve Hickey, PhD, from Manchester, England, provided these figures and says such small variations cannot be reliably used to make public health warnings.

So there is an infinitesimal increased risk for kidney stones among high-dose vitamin C pill users. But it made worldwide news headlines (again).

There is a minute statistical increased risk for kidney stones among vitamin C supplement users, but no practical risk.